all we are is skin and bones (trained to get along)
by darlingdearestdoll
Summary: "i love you as certain dark things are to be loved: in secret, between the shadow and the soul." – mergana


**Rated: T because it's 2017 and I'm still bitter af when it comes to Mergana.**

 **Summary:** you gave up the fight. you left me behind. – mergana.

 **Author's Note:** Mergana is canon nobody can tell me otherwise –

Hi, hello, I've just set a foot in and the Merlin fandom is already dying, I… I…

I'll just get to the point.

 **Disclaimer: Be honest, do you really expect me to say I own Merlin?**

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 _hold still right before we crash  
'causes we both know how this ends  
a clock ticks 'till it breaks the glass  
and i drown in you again_

 _._

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It all came down to this: She was a girl too full of spite and bitterness, a simmering flame that was meant to be beautiful, and wasn't she? The belle of the ball turned out to have venom coursing through her veins and a right that was omitted, and the fire in her was stoked higher and higher until it distorted and destroyed everything. I want what is mine, she didn't say. Magic weaved itself around her bones and she pitied those who waited.

Merlin snarled at her, _who are you, what have you become, look at yourself_ ; and she remembered a time when it was _you can trust me, I won't let it get to you, we can find another way._

(There's no other way.)

She laughed at him, openly and cockily, _I'm the High Priestess, I'm immortal_ (like you, she didn't say. We are so alike, you and I, and you, chose, him.)

(You chose him over us.)

(You chose him over me.)

And this would be her downfall, his harsh eyes and bitter voice, "I blamed myself for what you have become, but this has to end," she did not recognize (bright smile, eyes crinkling, delicate sprigs of baby's breath held together by a clumsy blue ribbon) Arthur's clumsy manservant, the devoted fool (hers); all memories and weathered soul forever earthbound. For a moment, fear slipped in.

Morgana counted her heartbeat, strong and steady.

[he is your destiny –]

The sword sliced cleanly through her body, breaking skin and bones. Flame spread out, _destiny does not lie, sweet childe._

Death tasted almost nostalgic on her tongue. Muscle memories rose like bile, _please, please, please_ , his arm locking her breath and poison on the roof of her mouth.

[– and your doom.]

He held her in his arms for a brief moment and it was all so familiar again. She choked on breath like sulfur, a tiny why on her lips; Morgana allowed herself a whimsy cry. Why, Merlin, why; a thousand visions (nightmares) scattered around them. In some she was the king's adventurous ward and nothing more. In some Arthur was no more than a farmer and Merlin an old hermit, never encountered. More than a few of them featured him standing alongside her and Camelot burnt to ash under their feet. The crown weighed on her head, a burden she gripped tightly.

In a tiny piece buried under betrayal, Merlin kissed her and she saw forever.

She fell among the dead, her body folded on dry leaves, darkness blanketing like a shroud. Blood matted on her makeshift dress, her hood bled vivid night sky. In death everything was flushed out, dry skin flaking of her body until she was all white bones.

There was nothing in his eyes, not even pity, just a horrible golden color. This was better. She wouldn't be able to deal with his pity. Wind caressed her face, air buzzing with the ozone taste. Current shifted and reshaped in her bones, her marrow redirected. Merlin leaned down, his face mere inches from her, and Morgana couldn't decide if she was grateful for this action or not.

She counted the heartbeat again. His, this time, stuttering with disbelief and denial. Hers trembled against frail ribcages, a weak attempt to pump life back in her body, hopelessness and improbability be damned; and oh, wasn't that the perfect metaphor of her life.

She stared at him; too gaunt face bleached white like paper stretched thin on bones as she fell, wind blades cutting her skin. Morgana might have said something, anything. A small part of him looked at her and saw the girl in burgundy dress and a smile brighter than all the candles in the castle that night, the girl with sympathy and a penchant for mischief.

[Someone – a romantic fool, perhaps; once said with absolute conviction, "your life flashed before your eyes before you die," and what a whim. All she saw was himhimhim, blue eyed and bright and then hostile until nothing was left at all; strawberry and hemlock, him, him, him, him.]

 _Who are you fighting_ , she wanted to say, absurdly, to this almost grown up boy who was nothing but blind devotion, _who are you fighting for when I'm trying for you?_

(And she was trying, trying, trying too but in the end, that didn't matter, did it? Another casualty, another collateral damage, for a better good –)

He was magic, tattooed into her bones. If she had known what the wretched dragon said to him, Morgana might have laughed in ultimate irony. Merlin was woven into her, the only way this could have ended. Miscommunication. Distrust. Two sides of the coin, _a half cannot hate what makes it whole._ Merlin flinched and she realized her hand was pressing against his cheek, enough force to bruise but not enough hatred to burn.

"Your eyes never leave me, you know." [1]

He exhaled shakily. Purple blue frost bloomed on his skin, horribly dark; vein webs spun on porcelain white. Morgana wondered how she reflected in his eyes now. She chased a water droplet in the corner of his eye, lingering at the corner of his lips, a remnant of an old conversation echoing back in time.

His mouth curled into a heavy smile.

"Can't I acknowledge beauty?"

Shhhh, little songbird. Her eyelids felt like burdens to bear, and it was a trial just to keep them open, if only to stare at him a little longer, if only to savor the final triumph over him.

"Can't you acknowledge... love? Perhaps you ache for what you've never known," and oh, wasn't this the perfect joke at her expense too.

"Perhaps you lust for what you cannot have." He said without preamble, but the biting that should have been there was missing too.

"Yeah." Her lungs seized. In half-light Morgana looked small and ethereal, all dark hair and melancholy and resignation toward death that he almost called her a different name. Milady. [2]

"I loved you, you know. Once." Morgana was all hollowed bones and cooled lava now, with death's shadowing her silhouette and her time clocked. For once the nightmares stopped screaming in the back of her skull. And if she hadn't been so surprised herself, she might have laughed at the bewildered look on Merlin.

(It's a realization and an accusation all at once, I loved you, I love you, I love you –)

And she was a part of him, his seventh rib, born from blood and flesh and grew in his spines, forever entwined with his sternum like ivy and fed on his marrow until he was bone dry and white dust; an infinite shadow, the darkness to his light. [his sins, his fault, his crime, (once, maybe, still) his love – a part of him thrown away; him, him, him –]

He took her hand and lift it to his mouth, a courtesy for lost time and a girl died of poison. His lips pressed against her knuckles, caressing ivory scars like an afterthought and he whispered, for a moment, this is it. What to say to innocence lost; his touch terribly gentle. Here's the pride before the fall.

 _I've missed you_ , he didn't say.

Her face pressed into the hollow of his neck, chin tucked between his collarbones and it was dangerously intimate, more lovers than enemies. For a moment, he mourned what could have been. Her breath fanned on his skin, shallow.

Then the clocked stopped, and every vision of future he had ever had shattered around them like glass in a storm.

"Goodbye, Morgana."

(It's as fitting a farewell for them as any.)

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[1]: This entire dialogue is actually quoted verbatim from the movie Excalibur (1981), said in-movie by, not so coincidentally, Merlin and Morgana.

[2]: Freya means 'Lady", so if you didn't get the implication… =))))

Yeeee I know it's trash, you don't have to tell me, _I know_ TTvTT


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